GERMANY’S RICHEST woman has been identified as the victim of a €7.5 million “sting” perpetrated against her by a former lover-cum-gigolo.
Documents made public this week by the state investigator’s office in Pescara, Italy, name Susanne Klatten (46) and three other German women as the victims of a blackmail worked by Italian-Swiss citizen Helg Sgarbi and Italian Ernano Barretta.
Both Sgarbi (41) and Barretta (63), and members of their respective families, are under arrest following an investigation that began last February when police in Pescara were contacted by their counterparts in Munich.
German police had opened an investigation following a formal complaint filed by Ms Klatten in which she denounced Sgarbi for having tried to extort nearly €50 million from her.
Ms Klatten told police that she had originally been contacted by Sgarbi – whom she knew because she had had a short-term relationship with him – looking for money to get the Italian-American Mafia off his back.
Sgarbi had claimed that while in the US, he had been involved in a car accident in which he had killed a child whose family had links to the Italian-American Mafia. Sgarbi claimed that if he did not pay the Mafia a large sum in compensation, they would kill him.
Ms Klatten believed his story and paid him €7.5 million but the matter did not rest there. In the autumn of 2007, she was again contacted by Sgarbi who asked for €49 million, this time threatening to make public DVD films of their sexual encounters. At this point, she went to the police.
In the meantime, she arranged to meet Sgarbi in Monte Carlo on January 14th this year. However, it was a German policeman and not Ms Klatten who kept that appointment, promptly arresting Sgarbi on charges of fraud and extortion.
Both Italian and German police quickly became convinced that Sgarbi had not been working on his own. The attention of Italian investigators became focused on Sgarbi’s friend Barretta, who had been seen with him in Monte Carlo. Investigators soon discovered that at various hotel “meetings” between Sgarbi and Ms Klatten, Barretta had taken their next-door room, presumably to film their amorous encounters.
A search of Barretta’s home revealed €2 million in cash, while it transpired that the Barretta family had also acquired recent wealth in the shape of villas in Egypt and Croatia, as well as a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and a Rolls Royce.
Police describe Barretta as the leader of a “religious sect” whose members are encouraged to have sex with him.